Lady in Waiting.

I sit and wait, wait for nurses to come and inject me to raise my blood cell count, wait for a new appointment with the surgeon who has decided to take a week's holiday to the Caribbean this week, and wait for the nuclear bone scan next week...

Weeks stretch out before me and yet, I cannot plan as I have no idea when anything is happening. I can't believe that it is only in the same week as their departure that the hospital actually get on the phone to call me... I am sorry as I am only waiting for certainty now, and that is impossible without professional input. This surgeon that I am waiting to see is the oncology surgeon - he is the one who will actually cut out the cancer and check that the margins around the wound are 'clean' ie devoid of cancer cells. After my first appointment with him, he will refer me to a plastic surgeon who will disuss with me exactly what I need, if I will need it and where I will need it.. But I won't make the face lift joke as I am sure that he will have heard it countless times before....

And the bone scan? I have been having some pain in my hips and knees and as the place that breast cancer goes to first after the breast is the lymph nodes and the bones, I am being scanned for caution's sake. I am grateful they are taking such good care of me...

And so I sit, a lady at her court of jigsaws, computer games, books and puzzles, a lady in waiting....

Minerva

It's over...

YES...
Minerva's last chemo of the current eight cycles took place today, and I am a combination of exhileration and trepidation.

First the trepidation. In the next three weeks I face surgery, surgery which is only definite in the sense that I know that they will operate on my left breast and lymph nodes. Yes, I know it won't be lumpectomy but it could be anything bigger than that and even when I come around from the first operation there is always the chance that I will need another one, or that they needed to take out more than they expected. The whole point of surgery is not just to take out the tumour cells but also to take out clear margins of normal cells around the tumour. Depending on the size and shape of the cancer, this can make the quantity they take out hugely variable...

Thursday I have my first meeting with the surgeon - the cancer surgeon and I haven't heard about my meeting with the plastic surgeon yet...but I can do it, I will do it, and I will do it like a magnificent heroine riding her white horse naked ..(and you thought I was always honest....) *grin*

But now, the joy, the deep satisfaction that I have completed one of the most gruelling episodes in my life. Break open the champagne - if any of you want my address for the flowers and chocolates, just let me know....*smile*

I had my first treatment the week after my birthday and had no idea of what to expect. I have been physically ill, but I think the most debilitating effect of chemo is the eroding of identity and the consequent depression that has resulted from that...but, it is temporary. Temporary in the sense that it finishes, and today, as I sit here in my little house nibbling on bland biscuits, sick bowl nowhere in sight, I feel exultant. IT IS OVER....

And I couldn't have done it without out... The past two sessions of chemo and indeed the last week have been vile, disgusting, worse that wet hair caught around the bath plug, or cat vomit on a child's bed, or even scraping one's shoe on dog excrement. All those things are easier to bear with a friend's hand, a smile or just a hug, and I can't thank you all enough for your support, your affection and your care...

Thank you...and raise your glasses!

Minerva

So angry...

I feel like a spluttering volcano inside: I feel so angry. So hot fat spitting, bomb crackingly, ear splittingly, dust hurricanely angry. I want to pick up all the furniture in my house and shatter it against walls. I want to write out a huge petition and give it to which ever creator seems to be governing my life right now.. WHY ME?

Why do I, indeed, why does anyone deserve this awful, life threatening illness that takes away one's confidence, one's presence and one's illusions? I keep trying to hold on to the threads that lash the net of my old life, but I see the tears in the fabric growing and see it slip through my hands, the tightness of the threads leaving tiny burns as they go.

Yet I look to the horizon, and what do I see? Nothing, sheer, dark illusive nothing. I see no life, no love, no laughter, no thing that shines through the darkness.. No, if anything, I only see more darkness - the stay in hospital and the weeks, the days of radiotherapy treatment....

I can't even see my old job there - all has shifted like a kaleidescope, and even then, the colours in a kaleidescope are nothing without the light to see them by. My light is going out - when shall it return?

Minerva

Not living but existing...

Time flows past me behind a glass window. I can see it move, see the sunshine rise and fall against the back wall, and feel the wind rattle my windows, rumble the roof and flap the tarpaulin against my daughter's bike outside. I sit, here in my house, alone, always alone, and like an island in the middle of a fast flowing river, time flows around me, beside me, but never with me. I am oblivious. I sit, here, here in this little space looking back to the past, looking forward to the future, feeling the present slip through my fingers.

I have no life. I have not gone out to a restaurant since September. I have not seen a man alone since I was diagnosed either friend, past lover or future. I have looked death and illness in the eyes, I have seen the shadows of the intruder in the mirror, I have lost my self confidence, my looks and my charm. I am but a shell of the person that I was only last summer.

I am sitting on a lonely island in the middle of a fast flowing river. The life I have, the life that I unwrapped that September afternoon is not mine, and yet.... I keep peering at the label on the parcel and hope that it is the life of the person next door, that this particular package that came through my door was misdelivered, but all I see is my name, my address but opening it, I see nothing at all. Where has life gone and will it ever come back?

Come and hold my hand
I wanna contact the living
Not sure I understand
This role I've been given
I sit and talk to God
And he just laughs at my plans
My head speaks a language
I don't understand

I just wanna feel
Real love feel the home that I live in
Cos I got too much life
Running through my veins
Going to waste
I don't wanna die
But I ain't keen on living either

Robbie Williams



Minerva

DAMN!

Last chemo today or so I thought. I have been a mixture of trepidation and joy all weekend. Trepidation because this would bring the surgery closer finally and joy because - well, do I really have to spell it out? Joy because my chemo would finally be over, thrown in the bin with nausea, depression and hair loss.

But a patient's relationship with chemo is like a dance, an energetic tango, an endless powerplay as chemo tries to constantly outdance your feet. First it strips your hair, your stomach and now, it has attacked my white blood cells. As most of us know, the white blood cells are the cells that attack infections. They, like the hair follicle cells, the digestive cells, and the mouth cells, and, of course, the cancer cells are rapidly dividing so they are attacked by the chemo. The doctors here refuse to give chemo when the neutrophil level, a component of white blood cells, is under 1.5. The normal level, just so you know, is level 5.

I have been aware for a while now that I have been skimming the surface of that level like a pelican skimming for food, but today, today I have sunk under it therefore putting myself at risk for neutropenia, an extremely serious complicaton which can, if ignored, end in death.

One can do absolutely nothing to bring this level back, only rest and really I am incredibly lucky that this is the first time that I have had this. A friend who began this chemo journey with me, is only on her fifth chemo as her neutrophil levels have been as low as 0.4 meaning that she has been hospitalised numerous times with infections.

It is reprogrammed for Friday instead, and although I keep telling myself how lucky I am that I have only been delayed for 5 days out of the whole 8 cycles, I am still disappointed...

Perfectionism anyone? *wry smile*

I was hoping the fat lady had sung...

Minerva

Self Knowledge.

I have learnt a great deal this week.

I have learnt that it is not the fear of surgery that is holding me back - it is the fear that even without deformity I am unlovable and that the extra physical cut will mean that I will never be loved again.

I have learnt that cancer is not actually the scariest thing I have to face - the most frightening thing is the fact that I think very little of myself, that I don't deserve love and won't find it.

I have learnt that I have a huge amount of self awareness, that I now know that it is vital for me to love myself, to think the world of myself and once that journey is on its way, that the cancer surgery will be easier. Still not a walk in the park perhaps, but certainly not the trek barefoot through the icy gorge that it once looked to be.

I have learnt to look positively upon uncertainty - I don't know if I shall have a small or large part taken, I don't know if I shall need to go back for another operation after the first, I don't know if I can have reconstruction right away or shall have to wait for a couple of years. I don't know and for the first time in my life, I am comfortable with that lack of knowledge. I am okay where I am right now...

I have learnt that the journey of cancer is a hike over hills and descents into valleys but that the gift of self knowledge is one that accompanies you all the way.

I have learnt that the internet, far from being a curse has given me some of the most supportive, loving, warm and friendly people I have ever met...

I have learnt that cancer does not give you an excuse to neglect your family and friends, that money pales in comparison to familial love and that however ugly, hairless or fat you get with cancer treatment your dog still loves you.

Minerva

All change again...

Another call from the nurse yesterday and now the original 'oncoplastic' surgeon doesn't have an appointment free for 5 weeks. As I really now just want to get on with it, she, (the surgeon) has recommended that I go on with an ocology surgeon (one who specialises in cancer surgery) as well as a plastic surgeon. This does complicate things a little, two surgeons, two appointments, two preppings, etc but it does also mean that the train is on track, that we have left the station and our destinations are now moving towards us.

How do I feel? I am trying really hard to focus on the positive, to think about this cancer being cut out of me for ever. Just think, in what is not much longer than a month, this lump that I feel every morning and every evening, will be gone. What is strange is that I find it so difficult to think of it being no longer a part of me, that I feel a sense of loss rather than a sense of relief. It is time to face that head on, to understand that this small lump of solid flesh could and will, if I leave it, kill me. That it would ooze into the rest of my body and set up homes in my lungs, my liver or my bones, and erase my existence.

At the moment, that possibility seems so far away and I have, until now, only focussed on the loss of flesh, on the grief that results and the consequent disfigurement. Like a child looking through a seaside telescope, I must swing away from the rocks of cancer and focus on the ship sailing free of the obstacles in its way. Like that ship, my bow may be a little battered from those rocks, my sails may have holes from the gales and storms I have had to get through, but that is the point, this boat, this body will get through....

Minerva

The opposite of whole...

And round again. The same nurse has called me to tell me that it won't be a 'lumpectomy' or a 'mastectomy' but a 'segmental mastectomy.' Well, thanks for the certainty, not. I really don't want this - I can't express how frightened I am...Think of a dog cowering before an intolerant master or a child scared in a corner sucking her thumb and chewing on a piece of cloth.

Even the definition tells me what I feel is right... Look, look hard, look at the opposite meaning whole or total or even entire.

Main Entry: segment
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: part
Synonyms: articulation, bit, compartment, cut, division, member, moiety, parcel, piece, portion, section, sector, slice, subdivision, wedge
Antonyms: whole
Source: Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus, First Edition (v 1.1.1)
Copyright © 2006 by Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

Main Entry: bit
Part of Speech: noun 1
Definition: piece
Synonyms: atom, butt, chicken feed, chip, chunk, crumb, dab, dash, division, dollop, dose, dot, driblet, droplet, end, excerpt, flake, fraction, fragment, grain, iota, item, jot, lick, lump, mite, modicum, moiety, molecule, morsel, niggle, parcel, part, particle, peanuts, pinch, portion, sample, scintilla, scrap, section, segment, shard, share, shaving, shred, slice, sliver, smidgen, snatch, snip, snippet, specimen, speck, splinter, sprinkling, stub, stump, taste, tittle, trace, trickle
Antonyms: total, whole
Source: Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus, First Edition (v 1.1.1)
Copyright © 2006 by Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

Even the dictionary agrees with me... my segment will be taken and I will no longer be whole, be entire or be a total of myself. No, I will feel disfigured, ugly. Why is this happening to me? What is the point of going through this? I am honestly so frightened, so unhappy...

I really want immediate reconstruction when they rebuild me but because I am having radiation therapy afterwards that is extremely unlikely as the radiation therapy induces changes in the skin and tissue of the breast which can be contrary to the healing of the reconstruction.

Part of me says to that that it doesn't care, that it is throwing all its toys on the floor, sweeping all the books off the shelves in a marvellous, foot stomping tantrum. I want to get on with my life, I want to leave all this detritus behind me like rubble on the war field and go back to work, go back to dating and on with everything I have to do.

Having to go back in a year's time for reconstruction completely breaks down my plans for the future. It will be like driving a car looking out for police cars at every junction - I just want to get on with my journey and stop looking at the speedometer....

I am so frightened....

Minerva

Can you hear it?

Can you hear it? That galloping noise which seems to be moving further away? That drumming, that regular beat which appears to be slowing? The sound of a giant tank being hammered by hundreds of tiny chemicals which eat away at its motion and slow its engine?

My tumour, as you know, is not getting smaller. In fact, for the last three chemos, the size of the cancer has not changed at all. As I feel it everyday, I have worried that I made the wrong choice by staying with the current regime...

Today, that thought changed. Today has proved that the castle that cancer has built is under attack, but this time from the inside.

The ultrasound last week showed in the opaque white blur of cancer, a dark shadow. A shadow of death indeed, but not for me, for the cancer. That shadow shows necrosis, the death of the cancer cells from the inside. The arrows of chemo, the infantry of needles and the cavalry of side effects may have exacted a toll upon their battle ground but an even greater price upon their enemy....

I am a fundamentally kind and loving person; I hope that I give more than I take, love more than I exact, but just for today, I have changed into a hireling, a ghastly, evil, blood toothed monster that is thrilled with the idea of revenge...

"DIE you devil, die!" I yell in the face of that inexorable tank.

Cancer, I have you on the run....

Minerva

Valentine's Day

A day of sweet bitterness. A day of red roses, hearts, and a day of grey,green death... In the early years of my marriage, the feast of St Valentine was always a day of muted celebration. We hated the way we were made to feel that we had to celebrate love and instead started our own tradition of take away pizza and chocolate fudge cake (warmed) with icecream followed by the obligatory cuddles on the sofa. Pure married bliss...

All that changed though in the year 2000 for on the 13th November, I received a phone call from my father. That, to be honest, was an event in itself. My father and I seldom spoke over the phone and when I took it from my husband of the time, I was thrilled to hear from him...or so I thought. He told me then that he had lung cancer but that it wasn't serious, he would have chemotherapy and was still planning to holiday and have his birthday in the summer and I, blind to the protectiveness of parents believed him.

It was only later when I met up with him for lunch and he fell asleep in his armchair that I could really look at him. That was when I saw it...the grey green pallor across his face that I know now heralded the fact that he was dying, even then... An infection from chemo meant that he was hospitalised, and he never came out alive but died, at the age of 60 on Valentine's day 2000 a mere 5 days after his own mother.

I still remember the room in the hospital, so small and narrow belting with heat from the radiators whilst the body in the bed just grew colder and colder. We only knew that he was slipping away when we felt his feet which were cold, colder than an unheated metal radiator.. He slept on regardless....

Dad would have hated to know that I can no longer enter into the passion and spin of Valentine's day. A true Lothario himself, he would have encouraged me to go out and flirt, drink and end up in true Bacchanalian style with drunk kisses to remember him by....but I? No, I can't do that... I just remember the bitter sweetness of Valentine's day and the tinge of red mixed with green grey - the herald of approaching death....

RIP HJG 1939-2000

Minerva



Technorati Tags: cancer, death, chemotherapy, valentine's day, love,

A weekend away

and after a delightful lunch of crossword completing and banter, a walk along country roads with 'the smelly dog.' Around me the fields spread like a smoothed duvet. The sunshine sprawls across the land, for the first time a hint of gold in its usual pale, winter bleached rays which glitter back to me from the river. On the side, reed crested, sits a grey heron, hunched against the English cold, grey backed against the dark green of the river bank, a creature of cloud, of a warmer climate. And past me, with a sudden whoosh of back blown air speed cars full of different people on their way to a million different places. People whom I will never know, never see again, people for whom this black hatted, black coated woman on the pavement is just a silhouette in their view of the countryside.

As I walk against the traffic, I see snapshots of emotions through windscreens. In one, a woman singing to her child, in another, older teenagers squabbling about a bag of sweets. In a maroon beaten up car, a whole family with possessions squeezed under a flapping blue tarpaulin speed on their way, in another a man and woman laugh, mouths open, unselfconciously caught up in the sheer spontaneity of the joke. And in another, a woman whose eyes are red with weeping, wipes tears away from her face with a white handkerchief. Another woman in the back between the front seats leans forward to offer her comfort and a younger man drives. I find myself wondering what it is that has hurt her, a relative ill or dying? A great tragedy of Aristotelian proportions or is it perhaps, stress, thoughtless words or some other irritant that whilst of great proportions to her seems as small to an objective eye as the stars that appear on a moonless night...

And against these maelstroms of emotional whirlpools in each little self contained car, the fields lie still, the grasses sway in the wind and the hedges guard, as they have for generations, the earth and land from the forces that would want to eke it away, stone by stone, crumb by crumb.

Our lives, it strikes me, are just like those cars. Each that lasts for a millisecond against the longevity of landscape. Am I and my illness just another vehicle? What kind of wind will my car leave behind it? Will my car leave litter strewn in the hedges, caught by the brambles or will my detritus fertilise and enrich the cars which follow behind me?

Only time will tell...

Minerva

The black cloud

is lifting all around me. The sunshine is back in London and back in my life. Yesterday a walk around the pond in Richmond park blew the grey fog out of my mind and replaced it with the sharp focus of clear sunbeams. Like a swimmer who has been deep below the surface of the ocean, in the fog and cloudiness of a dark netherworld and then broken the surface, I am splurging in the ecstasy of finding joy and laughter again.

The weight of procrastination has been shaken off, rather like a dog after a wet bath that wrinkles his coat and sprays everyone, I have thrown myself into my life again. Slowly, the work that I have been putting off, is getting done and like a mountaineer, I slowly eke my way back to the surface.

Friends have helped so much - new friends and old friends. Friends met whilst blogging who have called, flirted and made me feel feminine again. I still don't have the confidence to meet these people - my emails and phone calls are probably writing cheques my real life appearance can't cash, but the writing of them is fun in itself. I met a new friend in the hospital last week who is running for Cancer research next month and wants my blogname as the person she is supporting. And I feel honoured to be chosen. After all, I have done nothing noteworthy to deserve this - cancer merely chose me, and I write about how I feel...

Still indecisive on the dating site. I want the correspondence aspect but still need to cover myself with large jumpers and scarves to hide my body away. I don't want the physical reminders at the moment and feel, that my mind, my intellectual, emotional soul floats outside my physical self. My body is merely a carrier for the real me, a vehicle that needs topping up, and regular maintenance but which feels utterly divorced from my true essence. I am dislocated, a soul without an representative home, like a snail who has sheltered in a manmade bottle, I am wrong. I don't fit this skin. But I am sure, that eventually, like all things I will accustom myself to that oddness and find in its strange crevices, its wrinkled experience a beauty which surpasses the physical...but not yet...

Minerva

Internet Dating Dilemma...

I am no stranger to the machinations of internet dating... The last four boyfriends that I have had I have met through the internet and haven't regretted a minute. They were all charming, delightful, sensual men that I was lucky to have in my life. So, at the weekend, in a brief minute of self esteem I decided to sign on with another site...and hey presto, I look in my inbox in this site and I have received emails from a certain number of men who look delicious.. Now, as many of these sites are, I have to pay money to actually read the emails that they have sent me...

The question is, and here the rocking horse, apparently swinging forward abruptly hooks me back again, what is the point? I mean, the photographs I put up as being recent of me were relatively recent (September) but they were the me with hair, the me laughing, with two breasts, and with no obvious signs of serious illness... I would, ideally, like them to get to know the real me before suprising them with the fact I have cancer, but then face the disappointment of them disappearing at the drop of the word... Or I could tell them upfront and face disappointment right away as well as the potential revulsion in their face when they see me bald...or rather fuzzy...

I don't know..So I open it up to you, my dear readers - what would you do? What would you advise a single woman? I know the man worth his salt won't turn his back...etc...etc..but as so many of these things, that is fine on the written page, but in the real world it is scary.. I have never been shy before but now, now I hide behind my computer screen, hide behind a voice on the telephone or a lettered email...

Minerva

Afraid,

I sit here at my desk, so frightened of the future and what it holds. This is the toughest thing I have gone through ever. The sheer uncertainty of what is to come, and even more, the certainty of what is coming... I see no future for myself, only a fog and a face, darkly, in a mirror. Who am I and who will I be?

This morning I found a photograph of myself from the summer. Sunshine streamed through my hair, and my trendy sunglasses held back the really thick trains from my forehead. My face is curved with a smile and my neck and cleavage tanned from the holiday. My skin fit me, properly, like a well cut suit. It clung to all the right curves and glossed over the less favourable parts of my body. I used to see-saw hugely with my weight whilst a teenager and a young adult. I used to eat to find love and suffered the schizophrenia of a beautiful thin soul inside a repulsive body. It took me 12 years, three children, two nervous breakdowns and thousands of pills *grin* to get through that, and this summer, this summer, I was happy, finally, with my body, and with my self.

I look in the mirror and I have wispy fuzz on my head, my face is pale with care, and my body pale, hairless and pasty. I look in the mirror and I don't see a woman any more - I see a body whom I don't recognise. If it wasn't for my essential conciousness, I wouldn't believe that I was me, if you see what I mean...I actually keep checking in with reality. I look at my fingers on the keyboard and feel that they belong to someone else...and now, now I face even more defeminisation. In less than six weeks one of the essential feminine parts of me will be taken from me or altered. That frightens me so much, the violence of the scar, waking up with no lump on one side..and then, looking into the future. Will I ever have the confidence to chat up men again? Will I ever have the sassy smile that lit up any bar I walked into, the long hair and the sexy figure that meant that I turned heads... I liked that - it felt good and I loved being an object of admiration.

Through this time, though, that has all gone... Back is that scared fat 15 year old who always stood in the dark at school discos so as not to be laughed at. Back is the 15 year old who wasn't kissed until she was 14 when all the girls in her class had had their first kisses stolen from them at 12. Back is the little fat girl who cried whenever she had to struggle to try on another trendy piece of clothing and it didn't fit and still it continues.

Cancer is relentless - it takes away your health, it takes away your self-esteem and your femininity. It strikes at the essence of who you are, who you thought you were and who you believe yourself to be. I am living with a stranger and I am very very afraid for what the future brings...

Minerva




Technorati Tags: cancer, breast cancer, minerva, femininity, self image,

Phew!

Yes, the competition is finally over and although I didn't win, WOMP did well as runner up. (Don't you think WOMP is a great name for a cartoon animal?) Sorry - back to topic...Frankly, it was great to be able to meet so many other finalists and I do think that the winners were superb. You can check out the results here...

In a way, and I didn't think I would feel this way, I am relieved. I didn't set out to write this blog to be 'inspirational' and knowing that I had, to a certain extent, been pigeonholed into that made me more self-concious about my writing. As I say, I didn't set out that way, to win awards or be recognised - I started writing this because I knew, deep within myself, that I needed to write. That writing released the feelings of frustration inside me and somehow enhanced my living. I didn't feel I was living without writing... If anything, the tragedy of my life has been that I have always wanted to write but been without a topic - just like the woman who is all dressed up and nowhere to go- I have been the same on the writing front - pens in all sorts of colours and dimensions, thousands of notebooks and empty pages, and no topic...

Until cancer drove its bulldozer over my front lawn into my living room. But even then I didn't sit down thinking ' I must be positive about cancer'. I write because I need to show what is happening to me in all its myriad forms. Although I have been remarkably positive sometimes,I didn't want to show the 'cuddly' side but to show what actually happens when you embark and travel through this journey. When I was diagnosed, I looked everywhere for someone who really was going through it stage by stage to hold my hand, and couldn't find anyone....

Come, take my hand, please?


Minerva

The roller coaster

has swung again. The nausea is retreating, like dreams upon awakening that recede into the dark creases of the curtains only to come out when your eyelids fall once more. I am bruised - that is true. A strange side effect of these daily injections to raise my white blood cell count is that I feel like I have had 5 rounds in the boxing ring with a very heavy fighter. My shoulders and arms are sore to the touch - I can't even lean against a hard chair, but, as they say in the bible, this too shall pass....

I keep wanting to plan, to move forward with my life.. I feel like I have elastic attached to my feet and they struggle onwards and keep being snapped back by reality, by cancer. Procrastination has always been one of my worst faults - it has held me back for a lot of my life - something, somehow always keeps me from doing from what I want, need, desire to do.. One of the great things about Cancer, is that you no longer have that security - great did I say? Yes, today, great. How many years are you going to wait to do what you really want to do? Have you made plans for your retirement? I know I had thought of writing my book once I retired..but suddenly, that retirement plan isn't looking so certain. Hell, I may be fine, and writing away, or this cancer, once in remission, may come back and get me before then.

It is time now, not tomorrow, not later today, not later this week, this month, or this year, but now, right now. Right this second, stop your life. Press the pause button on the life CD player and look, hard, at that CD in the player. Do you need to refocus? What are you waiting for? That next paycheck? That next date? That next holiday? WAKE UP! Stop putting off those things which you see as rewards - put them in your life right now because, my friends, you never know if you will get that chance.

I know now, that I am truly mortal. Yes, we all have this awareness that we are going to die someday, but it seems far off, pushed to the back of the cupboard, hiding in the dark creases of the bedroom curtains. My darkness has come out, has raised its head, and showed me that this could happen anytime. Cancer could take me this year, next year, or anytime in the next 60 years. Death won't wait for me, so why the hell should I wait for it?

Think it, plan it, do it, and do it now....

Minerva